How to Cure Space Dementia in Thirteen Steps
by unwinding fantasy
Summary: What do you do when your next life is lives, plural, and the whole of space and time doesn't have the answer? OR The one where Roxas is a Time Lord – an alien who, when his body's sufficiently damaged, can regenerate into a completely new person – and Axel's the mad scientist who hitches a ride across the universe with him. [Akuroku] [Next Life fic] [AU] [Complete]


**Title:** _How to Cure Space Dementia in Thirteen Steps_  
 **Author:** unwinding fantasy  
 **Disclaimer:** _Kingdom Hearts_ , _Final Fantasy_ and _Doctor Who_ ain't mine.  
 **Rating:** T for language and violence.  
 **Pairing:** Axel x Roxas  
 **Summary:** What do you do when your next life is lives, plural, and the whole of space and time doesn't have the answer?  
 **Author's Note:** In which Roxas is a Time Lord – an alien who, when his body's sufficiently damaged, can regenerate into a completely new person – and Axel's the mad scientist who hitches a ride across the universe with him. Contains allusions to various _Disney_ and _Final Fantasy_ worlds. Glossary at the bottom for any alien terminology. Drop me a line if you make it past the phrase "Untempered Schism" because you probably deserve a medal.

* * *

v.

His hearts thundered, a war drum in his veins as his ship spun wildly against a backdrop of alarms protesting the dangerous descent. All efforts at stopping proved futile; he'd reached terminal velocity and the outside of the ship was superheating, plummeting through the planet's atmosphere. Teeth bared to the gums, he clung to the console. Briefly, he wondered if this was it, if he'd finally run out of lives and was going to end up as a crater on some backwater mudball. The natives might collect the debris for display in their museums. That was his last coherent thought before the collision and the great white nothing.

* * *

i.

When he was just a tot, his parents dressed him in ceremonial robes and brought him before the Untempered Schism to stare into eternity, the great pulsating mass of blue energy that disrupted his force carriers and scorched his atoms, ripping apart the electrons and quarks before jumbling them back together in some semblance of sensibility. The test was like burning up from the inside out, spontaneous combustion, twin hearts pounding in his throat, but the agony wasn't even the worst of it. No, the worst was the fear: blinding, mind-crushing. In that moment, he hated his parents for urging him to become a Time Lord. He would've fled if his legs hadn't given out already. Instead, hours or seconds later they handed him an acceptance letter inked on crisp white parchment, an archaic eccentricity given their technology but the past stuck irreversibly to his people, and he clutched it exhaltently while his patched together body brimmed with a fervour akin to relief. Him, at the Academy! He wasn't exactly genius material amongst his race, renowned for its intelligence, so the acceptance was a surprise of colossal proportions.

He understood this feeling, vibrating with excited anticipation at learning to bend time and space. What he didn't understand was how peering into that time rip had also torn asunder something deep within him, leaving a small but undeniable _thing_ tugging at his core, a _thing_ that was an absence and a burning presence at the same time, that he suspected had been missing from the moment he took his first breath and only now had the insight to acknowledge.

He'd wanted the Prydonian Chapter - it was the most prominent after all - but instead he'd been shunted to the Ceruleans, a quiet chapterhouse of little influence. His parents offered congratulations, genuinely pleased at their son's progress. His friends, who all belonged to more illustrious colleges, joked that at least the robes matched his eyes. For his part, the boy refused to be disappointed. Status didn't really matter. The important thing was he'd been dubbed worthy of learning the intricacies of space travel and timeflow.

The Cerulean Academy sat by the sea. The ocean air trailed clarity in through his window and the taste of salt on his lips stirred the _thing_ inside, ensured his drive wasn't dampened by the crippling curriculum. The persistent flame was fanned by his progress and the _thing_ flourished, a fiery blossom bent on being sated. Talk of offworld travel wasn't something his professors wanted to hear from a child so he quickly learned to keep silent on the matter. Amongst his classmates however he spoke of little else but leaving their homeworld. A peer called the condition _wanderlust_ , a word originating from a dialect spoken on Sol III (or Earth, as the natives quaintly called it, as if there was no earth anywhere else). He knew it wasn't the correct term though. _Wanderlust_ was a desire to travel, could be fulfilled by simply stepping out the front door and running. What he felt was more akin to _fernweh_ : a soul-deep sickness at _not_ travelling, the feeling of slowly dissembling with each second spent stationary.

* * *

vi.

His head was ringing, solar flares blossoming behind his eyelids, body collapsing on itself. A low keening filled his ears and it wasn't until he finally cracked open his eyes that he realised the sound was emanating from him. He tried moving but a sharp pain lanced down his leg and his vision whited out again. He tried calling out but choked on the globulous blood coating his mouth so thick he could smell it, that deep unavoidable kind of stench that agitates your gag reflex and makes your eyes water.

"Shit!"

At the sound, he forced his eyes open. A burst of red. A green gaze that could have been unsettling if not for the fact that the owner looked completely out of his mind himself. The redheaded human pressed his ear to the injured man's chest, recoiling in shock a heartsbeat later. He quickly recovered though, pulling the man by the lapels, stuttering, "You okay? Can you hear me? Shit shit shit!" Desperation coiled around each syllable and behind the pain, he vaguely hoped this human was overwrought by nature, that things weren't as dire as his reaction implied. The redhead's eyes widened when he saw the other was conscious and he hauled him away from the crash site, shooting worried glances over his shoulder with every other step, the movement eliciting an indistinct noise from the injured party. The hand he stretched towards his ship was deftly batted away. Around laboured breathing, the redhead managed to grind out, "Your Coke machine can wait, Christ!"

Warm tingling began spreading from his extremities. He coughed out an approximation of, "Get back," making the redhead's face crinkle in confusion. No time to explain. "Move!" he hissed, staggering to his feet, ignoring the other's protesting, "Woah!" He could already feel the warmth increasing to a burn, hearts battering furiously against his ribcage and why was this idiot still standing there? The burn turned to thousands of pinpricks then a sudden blast of light as his every nerve ending ignited. He felt his bone structure shifting: stretch of fingers, swelling of shoulders, the abrupt disorienting sensation of being cut off from all sight and sound and taste before everything came rushing back, sucked into him with the force of a supermassive black hole, mouth open in a noiseless scream. He collapsed, loud panting slicing the still air, lungs aching like he'd been chasing something he'd never be able to catch.

"You... You..."

He glanced up. The redhead's face was a whirl of _what-the-hell_ and _oh-my-god_ and then, wait for it, yes there: _how-on-earth?_

He dusted himself off, said, "The answer, of course, being _not_ on Earth."

The redhead fainted.

* * *

ii.

Being a dedicated student didn't make him immune from lapses in concentration. Every so often, the _thing_ would become unbearable in its tugging and at those moments the only way he could cope was by taking a time machine for a joyride.

The first world he visited was a near catastrophe, his hijacked Type 30 materialising approximately twenty thousand feet below sea level. Water rushed inside the instant he slid open the door, decimating the bowling alley, skate park and at least nine bedrooms before he miraculously managed to push the damn thing closed again. Drowning was not high on his list of priorities. In fact, it wasn't on there at all but just to make doubly certain, the man mentally tore up his list and began afresh. He pumped out the fluid, rooted around one of the storage rooms and uncovered the ship's instruction manual, which he spent hours pouring over trying to decipher how to extend the artificial atmosphere so he could poke around outside. By the time he slipped out, comfortably strolling on the sandy seabed, a gathering had formed around the perimeter. His eyes lit up at the sight of a woman who would pass for one of his kind if not for the fact that her waist morphed into a fish tail. Years of study provided the term _mermaid_ and the man's hearts skipped a beat as he appraised the way her red hair billowed like sunblooms.

"Who are you?" the mermaid asked. She was floating some distance from the border of his atmosphere and her aquatic environment, not daring to approach.

His textbooks also told him he shouldn't meddle with other worlds. The right thing to do would be to slam his ship's doors and put it into reverse. Instead, the man scratched the back of his neck. "Well," he drew out the word, thoughts flapping around his brain like seabirds fighting over food, and eventually concluded, "You wouldn't be able to pronounce it if you tried." He offered his best apologetic smile to take the edge off the words.

The mermaid's blue eyes shifted through surprise to annoyance to acceptance in a matter of moments and the man was reminded of changing tides. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, mine's easy even without gills. I'm Ariel. You're not from Atlantica, are you?" No sooner had the words left her mouth, she uttered a soft gasp. "Did you come from the surface?" With a determined flick of her tail she dashed forwards, stopping a hair's breadth from the barrier, which she prodded experimentally. It wouldn't give and she huffed, a little defeated cloud of bubbles issuing from her mouth.

"Uh, yeah. Sort of. From the sky." He paused, wondering precisely how much information he was permitted to impart before it technically became meddling. A yellow fish raced up behind the mermaid, her name tumbling from its mouth along with protestations about her swimming too fast. His complaints cut off when he noticed the anomaly of the man and his spacecraft and he promptly screeched to a halt, bumping into Ariel's back with a muted, "Ow!" The man raised an eyebrow; Ariel smiled indulgently and murmured a few encouraging words to the creature. Gradually, the fish peeked out from behind her arm. "You've got legs!" he exclaimed.

"Flounder! That's not how we speak to guests." Ariel's mock stern tone quickly gave way to giggles and her face glowed, fins trembling with eagerness. "But they do look wonderful, don't they?"

Flounder blew a raspberry. "Weird's more like it," he muttered. Suddenly aware he'd potentially provoked a predator, a nervous caution flooded his features and he shrunk a little further behind the mermaid. He gave the man a sceptical look. "Who're you?"

He opened his mouth to explain the difficulties an aquatic lifeform would have pronouncing his lengthy name but the mermaid beat him to it. "He's Sky," Ariel supplied. He didn't have long to analyse why the name turned his veins to ice because she added, "and he's going to take me up there."

"What!" both man and fish spluttered. "Why?" the man queried while the fish said, "You can't! You'll _die_ if you go up there."

Ariel sighed. Her gaze travelled upwards. "I'll die if I stay here too," she said, quiet but determined, each syllable laced with an indescribable yearning that nudged the _thing_ deep within the man's chest.

Despite only having a handful of decades' worth of knowledge, the man was sure taking a mermaid above the surface would constitute disrupting the timelines. Bad enough that he'd stolen a TARDIS to settle his _fernweh_ ; the last thing he needed was to accidentally accelerate the evolution of an entire species. If his professors didn't expel him for this jaunt they definitely would for meddling.

"I'm sorry," he said, hating the way his hearts squeezed tight like they were weighted in the darkest expanse of the deepest sea trench. The last thing he heard as he slammed the ship's door was a plaintive, "Sky!"

He managed to sneak the ship back into the hangar without issue (aside from the fact that the chameleon circuit had gotten stuck, the Type 30 apparently doomed to looking like a Coca Cola vending machine for the rest of eternity). In subsequent centuries the unsettling underwater encounter didn't stop him from similar flights. The _thing_ was too demanding, larger than himself, uncontainable and undeniable. Ariel didn't leave him unaffected though. For the rest of his days in that incarnation, he heard the name echoing around his mind each night before sleep claimed him: one syllable refracted off a maze of mirrors and every surface he looked at showed a different face.

* * *

vii.

"What the _fuck_ just happened?"

The human. Only out for a handful of seconds then because the man's digits were still skimming his new face, noting the cleft in this chin, the faint wisp along this jaw, the almost dainty upturn of this nose. He ran his tongue along his new teeth, pleased to discover replacements for the ones he'd lost during his brief tenure in SOLDIER. He plucked out a couple of strands of hair. Blonde, good. "How did I get here?" he said, not really expecting the redhead's input, figuring he knew the answer already (his Type 30 had a bad habit of dumping him wherever it thought necessary).

The redhead was eyeing him warily. "In layman's terms? Wormhole. Now would you mind explaining what the hell that was with your, your—" He gestured wildly.

 _That_ was unexpected. He stared at the redhead, wondering if he was actually telling the truth, before probing, "In technical terms?"

The redhead _tsk_ ed with exasperation. "I generated a _kugelblitz_ , an event horizon formed and you were dragged through the subsequent rip in spacetime." He rattled this off tersely with the air of somebody used to not being understood, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he demanded, "Now seriously, how the hell did your entire body just _change_?"

His hearts flipped in disgust, the charred metallic chunks scattered around them suddenly taking on new meaning. He rushed forward, stumbling because his freshly regenerated legs were still wobbly, and punched the redhead's narrow nose, sending him sprawling onto his back, glasses flying. He didn't ask how - the how was irrelevant - but he yelled, "Are you kidding? The heat from that would surpass the temperature of the birth of this universe!" Not to mention his TARDIS had been regurgitated miles above the pathetic gateway, indicative of poorly aligned temporal nodules. Why did humans always mess with things they didn't understand?

The redhead wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away bloody. "Yeah, well, obviously I did it wrong," he grumbled.

The blonde's breath hitched. "You _wanted_ to destroy everything?"

"No!" The redhead shuffled into a sitting position, working his jaw. He spat bloody clumps onto the ground. "I was trying to go through it," he murmured, cutting his gaze to the side.

The blonde felt faint. He collected the miraculously undamaged glasses, offering them to the redhead – he accepted with a grudging sniff - and sat cross-legged opposite him. Softly, he said, "Travelling unprotected through the time vortex is suicide. Why would you want to do that?"

The redhead fixed him with a piercing gaze that turned the man's mouth drier than the plains of the Pride Lands. "I need to get off this planet before my brain shrivels up or I gnaw off my own arm from boredom. Eleven billion people on this snoozefest of a planet and I feel like the only one. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

The words made the man's chest swell. He dug deep, searching, searching. That resolute pulling that had spurred him on for centuries, the sensation he'd safeguarded all this time, the _thing_ that had kept him going through life after life after life... The _only thing..._

It was gone.

* * *

iii.

No matter how often he sneaked across universe, the _thing_ didn't subside, forcing him to abandon his earlier _fernweh_ diagnosis and reassess. The ache grew as his timestream flowed on. Just what precisely was this empty feeling? If he wasn't constantly reminded by his twin pulse, he'd think he was lacking a heart.

Whenever study became too cumbersome or he turned some timeline whacky after a joyride in that Type 30 that was fast becoming his best friend, he would run to the fields outside the Capitol and lose himself. He would flop down to watch the double sunset, hands carding through the blades of crimson grass. There was something peripherally wrong with the scenario, something strange in the two gaseous globes dipping below the horizon, but the soft red strands between his fingers were just a heartbeat away from perfection.

He clung to his white acceptance letter, slept with it beneath his pillow, stared at it over piles of recreational mathematics and cybernetics and complex temporal induction problems. He was never a brilliant student but he studied hard, curried favour with his professors, was well-loved by his peers…

…and despite his relative stupidity (it was hard existing amongst geniuses), he might have even graduated if not for that time he irrevocably muddled the timestream and generated a paradox that had the High Council in such a rage he was surprised they didn't spontaneously combust.

* * *

viii.

The sour taste of desperation flooded his mouth. To have that guiding light severed so abruptly left him feeling like a newborn stumbling in the dark, legs shaking as he weaved through the shattered remains of the time gate, a strange circle of debris that made him think of black rituals and the occult. _I have to find it again,_ he thought, banging on the door at the rear until he managed to slip inside. A quick check of the vitals revealed the damage was mainly superficial, though there was something off with the navigational systems so he rolled up his shirtsleeves, ducked under the console, unscrewed a panel and began fiddling with the wires.

"It's bigger on the inside!"

He jumped, banging his head on the core computers before sliding out to glare at the redhead, who was turning slow circles, wide-eyed and wider-grinned. "Of course it is. It's a TARDIS: Time in Relative Dimension and Space," he grudgingly explained, watching the redhead dash to the central computer system, gaze flickering across each segment with alarming alacrity.

"A spaceship?"

"A spacetimeship."

The redhead gaped in awe, zipping around the control room like a particularly excitable electron, poking his head down corridors and service chutes. "This is so fucking cool! How'd you cram so much in here? Basic miniaturisation maintained through some powerful compression field? Or is this a portal to another point in spacetime?"

The blonde lifted his eyebrows. How a human of the year 2046 knew about such concepts was a curiosity worth investigating. "Transdimensional engineering," he supplied, noting how the other's eyes lit with a strange combination between understanding and complete confusion, long fingers straying to the handbrake. "No touching," the blonde sniped. He liked the way this new voice sounded when issuing commands.

The redhead held his hands up. The way he looked around the ship, gaze caressing each component, face alight with wonder made the blonde snort. Humans were so easily impressed. The redhead said, "It's cool and all, but a _vending machine?_ "

He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. He spent little time worrying about outside appearances. _Now, if I can find a way to bypass this interlocker..._

No sooner had he repaired the damage, the tapping of keys drew his attention. Didn't this guy _listen_? Alarmed, he pushed off from the back panel and slid out from beneath the console, winding up between the guy's multi mile legs. It wasn't like the redhead could actually shift them anywhere but the forceful way he was punching buttons and pulling levers at random left the blonde worrying over potential damage to the ship. He inhaled sharply, ready to rip the redhead a new one, but swallowed his annoyance when the guy muttered, "Isomorphic controls? Where's the fun in that?" His Jupiter green eyes flicked down. The blonde blanched; the human's brows lifted as he said, "Hello. Don't mind me. Just trying to get us not stranded in the middle of nowhere."

The blonde rolled his eyes, trying to ignore how the tapping of his heartsbeat picked up. Travelling companions were insufferable. "This is your home," he pointed out. There was no way this redhead was tagging along.

"Like I said, nowhere. Name's Lea, by the way." The blonde completely ignored the expectant stare, pushing Lea away as he got to his feet. He ran a full diagnostic scan and started programming his next destination when Lea said, "That's your cue."

"Doesn't matter what you call me. You're not staying." Besides which, "Tredecimsasxor" didn't exactly roll off a human's tongue.

"Aw, come on. I brought you to this majestic blue planet and you're just gunna up and leave?" His expression went from excited to crushed in exactly point zero eight seconds. The blonde hated that he was paying that much attention. Had he really been travelling alone so long that he'd forgotten the minutiae of people?

He shook his head. Where had friends ever gotten him? Discouraged and disowned. Newly fixated on engaging the thrusters, he pointed behind him. "Door's that way."

"But I've been waiting my entire life for this!"

"Don't care."

"Cold, man." The sound of scuffing feet, then, "Before I go, you might wanna check the wormhole synthesiser'sfunctional." As the blonde's focus shifted back to him, his gaze skittered sideways. "The readings just look a little weird, is all," he muttered, offering a sharp shrug. Angry then. He couldn't blame him. It was hard to witness the impossible then walk away pretending nothing had occurred.

He took a moment to look at Lea, to really absorb this whip of a human. Between the singed clothes, hair tumbling out of its messy bun and the way his bent glasses slanted haphazardly across his narrow nose, it was amazing Lea's body harboured such oddly endearing contrast, and the blonde's expression softened. "Quirk of the ship," he lied. In reality, he'd busted it after a rough landing on some frozen planet, but damned if he confessed to piloting failures.

"Oh." Lea's jaw jumped, fingers twitching at his sides and when nothing further was offered, he sighed, murmured, "Guess you've made up your mind." Fists balling, he took a quick breath, strode to the other side of the ship and tugged open the door.

The phrase resonated in his core, a solitary note like the prelude to despair, and he was almost floored by the force demanding he stop this man, blood railing against endings. He shut off the thrusters. The words were spilling from his lips before he consciously thought of them. "It'll be dangerous."

The ship shuddered to a halt; Lea staggered at the threshold, steadying his balance on the door frame before throwing a cautious glance over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

"I've been disowned by my own race, burned through ten of my regenerations in the equivalent of a human's adolescence, screwed up more civilisations than I can recall…" The side of his mouth turned up in rueful apology. "Are you sure?"

"Well, I barely sleep 'cos I'm usually tinkering in the lab and when I do, I snore. My hair's a natural disaster, my cooking's worse and my socks never match. Am _I_ sure?" Lea shut the door and grinned. "Hell yeah."

* * *

iv.

It wasn't his fault. One moment he was drifting through the time vortex, studying the chapter on how to navigate asteroid fields in magnetic storms, next he was sucked into a fissure and regurgitated centuries in the past. Classical antiquity judging by the style of swordjutting out of his stomach. With a wordless whine, he yanked it out and collapsed among a legion of corpses, breathing shallow little gulps like he was stuck in an airlock with no oxygen, trying to block out how scared he felt. Bleeding out on the battlefield, his first regeneration came at least five decades too early, the pain searing across his synapses as his body twisted and changed freely because he lacked the mental maturity to direct it. Battle-born, so was it any wonder he became a creature of instinct, utilising the very weapon that had killed him to tear a path through soldier after soldier after soldier, vision narrowed to red haze as he executed his macabre war dance until his body gave way? It wasn't until later, when his eyes slit open to a tent roof and rationsand the man who would be his saviour, that he learned he'd cleared half the field in his frenzy.

"My men are demanding your blood. I should heed their council. Death is the only fit penance for the good Romans you slew today. They fear the golden eyed devil who carves a path through sinew and flesh, leaving emptiness in his wake."

Slowly, he sat up, running a languid gaze around the room, coasting for cutlery or cooking utensils or the tools used to pitch the tent, anything he could use in the event of attack. The soldier's mouth twitched as if he could guess the man's thoughts. "As fortune has it though you dispatched more of my enemies than my friends so I've decided to spare you. Perhaps Mars had a purpose in ensuring we were outmatched two-to-one."

The man frowned. "I serve no one."

"And I wouldn't expect deference from a warrior of your prowess. It would be but a ruse. If your pride won't allow for such deception however your life will be forfeit. What say you?"

So this soldier thought he had no choice. He didn't realise the moment he was free, he would head back to his TARDIS and jump millenniums ahead of their pathetic "empire". The man's hearts twisted with wicked glee. "Sure," he said around his smirk, all dark edges and tension like the crackling before a thunderstorm.

But he didn't run to his TARDIS because the _thing_ had receded, for once permitting him rest. The fear in the Romans' eyes was invigorating and the towering monstrosity that the _thing_ had become was cowed by this new attitude, shoved aside in favour of bloodlust, smothered by cruel laughter. Searching was such a _chore_ , traipsing across galaxies on nothing more than feeling. On the flip side, death was definite. After lifetimes of operating on whisper and rumour, he was happy to step into the role of oblivion bringer.

In the ensuing years, the Empire grew and the Romans learned not to get in his way thanks to his predilection for slaying both friend and foe, loathe to waste time differentiating when it was a matter of life or death. He became intimately familiar with all the ways a human being's body was breakable, sneered at their laughable limitations and revelled in infamy. The Greeks had Hercules but the Romans had Vanitas.

His friend climbed the ranks on his own merit and through blood and backstabbing and bitter struggle, he scrambled up after him. He became a member of the Praetorian Guard, then the commander. The wary side glances civilians gifted him, the way his subordinates shrank from his gaze, how servants wrung their sweaty palms whenever they delivered a message, all of it was starting to tick him off now.

He was quelling primitives halfway across the planet when his friend was betrayed by dozens of daggers wielded by underhanded politicians feigning friendship. He'd thought he'd guarded his hearts well this time but Julius' demise cut him deep. The lost connection kickstarted the _thing_ in his chest but of course he couldn't just move on. He skipped backwards, intent on ensuring his friend cheated death, but he got the parameters wrong and arrived right at the instant the first stab struck. Rage thundering through his veins, he slaughtered every last traitor. That should've been the end but the satisfaction of sliding his sword into their so soft bodies was short-lived so even though it went against all their teachings, he travelled back again. This time he saved Julius, barely registering his surprise at his sudden appearance, and watched the Vanitas from his first jump kill all the would-be assassins anyway. Bathed in blood, lips pulled back over teeth in a feral grin, the image seered into his retinas, rendered him a retching mess over Julius' sandals. He fled, horrified at the monster he'd become.

His return to the Academy was hailed with snide whispers and wide eyes, former friends exchanging cursory pleasantries before rushing off to sit this exam or meet that professor. He felt crushed beneath the heavy weight of their appraising gazes: here, the stupid boy who regenerated too early, Gallifrey's dirty little secret. The High Council was livid because all his meddling on Earth had generated a paradox that took their combined wits to straighten out but even they couldn't stop civilisation advancing too quickly. Without taking a natural evolutionary pathway, the humans were doomed to self-destruct.

Brokenly, he told them of the _thing_ , how he'd been driven crazy by this itching that _just wouldn't cease_ , how he'd carved out his moment's peace in blood. His catalogue of destruction made even the most stalwart of the High Council sneer in disgust. Nobody offered comfort while he stood in the Great Hall sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, except for the Lord Chancellor, who insisted it wasn't his fault, that the _thing_ planted in him by the Time Vortex was to blame.

But that was one person among many, besides which the words did little to assuage his guilt. Where a less pompous people might forgive his flaws or at the very least submit him some insurmountable punishment, the Time Lords of Gallifrey decided the best thing to do was expel him. Staring down at his tiny, tiny homeworld, disappointed at how he'd never learned the geography of the deep valleys or the beautiful way the sunlight brushed the mountain ranges, he wondered what he'd do now. Drift like space detritus? Spend all his lifetimes trying to make amends? Self-destruction was always an option, he supposed, a couple of years wasted watching the planet tango with two burning stars, calculating precisely how long his ship would take to disintegrate in the inferno.

It wasn't his fault: a pretty lie to stop him hurling himself into the nearest sun.

* * *

ix.

Living with Lea was like regeneration for the mind, the intrigued way he looked at everything inspiring wonderment in a lifeform who'd already lived too long. It was hard at first, ignoring the gaping nothing where the _thing_ had been, but Lea was a great distraction with his calculating gaze and firecracker wit, not to mention his ability to draw the blonde out of long silences by accusing him of being a zombie.

Lea laughed until he cried when the blonde explained Gallifrey, insisted on calling him "Your Lordship" even after he confessed he'd never graduated so technically wasn't a Time Lord even if people tended to use the term interchangeably with Gallifreyan. "Sounds much grander than doctor of physics," Lea said, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Despite the smiling, the sight was still unsettling.

They visited worlds where perpetual Christmas reigned, where child mercenaries battled sorceresses, where up was down and right was left and a purple cat purred riddles in their ears. Even facing certain death after getting sucked into a pocket universe, a tiny timeshot of reality that was so unstable it would only exist for a handful of hours, just made him laugh with reckless abandon, scurrying from one end of the ship to the other until they puzzled out how to generate enough energy to escape.

Always, there was something to marvel at, Lea scarfing down his fourth doughnut and insisting this metropolis could be New York if not for the anthropomorphic animals and traffic that actually flowed. Aside from constantly scratching in notebooks and asking pointed questions with a scientist's disregard for what's proper or polite, there was little about Lea that could be categorised as annoying. His astounding intellect, maybe, because of course it grated that a human could digest the TARDIS's instruction manual within a week of finding it dumped in a recyclable receptacle (which the clearly unamused ship had refused to empty, much to its owner's chagrin). If he didn't know better, he'd think Lea was the Time Lord. The blonde sighed. So he wasn't cut out for study. He was still smarter than ninety-nine percent of the rest of the known universe, and probably a good chunk of the unknown too.

He was brooding over this while floating through deep space, waiting for the Galactic Federation to complete their sweep (he'd told them there was no stowaway experiment on board but they'd insisted on checking). For lack of anything better to do, he plucked Lea's notebook off the desktop and sifted through, squinting at the handwriting that unfurled across the pages like smoke from a dragon's mouth. Instead of scientific equations, he found a list of dates and times followed by brief descriptions of events he couldn't recollect accompanied by the odd sketch. When he reached a page covered by a looming high rise, his eyebrows migrated to the vicinity of his hairline.

The unremarkable building had been the centre point of that pocket universe yesterday. They'd almost collided with the stupid thing. _I guess Lea likes cataloguing all his near misses?_ It was a very scientific way of processing catastrophes.

At his shoulder: "You right there, Lordship?"

He snapped the book shut, hearts lurching when he noticed Lea peering over his shoulder. He made a small positive noise, cheeks heating for some undiscernible reason as he parcelled the item over.

Lea lifted an eyebrow. "What? It's not porn or anything." The blonde shook his head, trying to dispel the sensation of being caught doing something shameful. Lea leaned over and closed the book, unbound hair tickling the blonde's ear. "It's my very unexciting, very unscientific dream diary, okay? Don't act like you weren't dying to ask," he drawled, waving the book in the blonde's face with a magician's flare.

Once his voice stopped catching in his throat, the blonde said, "Why record your dreams?"

Lea laughed. "No real reason, I guess. Something to take my mind off the fact I'm billions of lightyears away from home, maybe. Nothing worth getting your panties in a twist about." Lea had been dying to get off Earth though. A magician's flare and misdirection. The blonde's eyes narrowed. "I've always had them," Lea added.

"How often?" the blonde pursued.

Lea waved a hand airily. "I dunno. Once every two, three…"

"Months?"

"Days."

He tugged Lea's flapping hand plus the rest of him onto the couch (he fell with a soft _oof_ ) so he could look him in the eye. He didn't understand why Lea was being so reticent about this. Then again, he also couldn't pinpoint why he had the sudden desire to learn everything about Lea's subconscious images. "What else do you dream?" he demanded, batting Lea's hair out of his face.

"Lots of weird shit, but you'd expect that when the last planet you visited had talking cars."

"Specifics."

His serious tone immediately sobered the redhead, who emitted a long exhalation before leaning back, hands nestled behind his head as his gaze swung to the roof. "Okay… Where do I start? Lots of sunsets. Keyholes. Creatures that devour hearts. Oh, and burning. I dream about burning a lot." He looked sidelong, almost shyly, at the blonde. "Is that bad?"

He averted his eyes. "Can't see it being a problem. Even Time Lords dream." Which was a lie but before Lea could confront him about it, the Galactic Federation commander strode in and offered a perfunctory apology for the inconvenience before the conversation steered towards where a highly volatile genetic experiment with the appetite to disrupt twenty food chains might hide.

That should have been the end of it but Lea's words were like splinters inching into the blonde's mind. More than just the subject matter, there was something about the dreamlog that tickled the back of his brain, parasitic and persistent.

Time tracked on. The blonde burned through two more regenerations. After a run-in with space pirates he became a black-haired female, which was interesting for approximately three weeks before the very gates of hell opened and Lea begged him to change back because he was acting "even pissier than usual". Illness took him not long after that, and he became blonde again with a marked improvement in height. All the while, Lea developed bags beneath his eyes, kept microsleeping in the middle of discussion about various exoplanets. It wasn't like the blonde was ignoring Lea's problem but Lea never complained and every time the blonde thought to ask, he'd get distracted by a new problem with the transducers or the fact that they'd been absorbed by a wormhole and accidentally wound up at the fringes of the solar system.

He was shoulders-deep in a kitchen cupboard excavating the old microwave (Lea had interrupted _The Matrix_ to bemoan their lack of popcorn) when the redhead himself appeared. He stood there for an entire minute, which was practically a life vow of silence for him, before opening his mouth to admit, "It's getting worse."

A stack of metallic plates he swore hadn't been there yesterday came crashing down, bopping him square on the nose. The things he did for this human! "I'm sorry your craving for salty, butter-slathered, air-popped corn kernels has reached critical limit. Five minutes."

"Not that."

The blonde shimmied out and sat up, rubbing his nose. "Then what?"

"The dreams. I keep waking up in the middle of the... whatever…" Every hour looked the same on the TARDIS, even though it was perfectly within its capabilities to generate an artificial day/night cycle. "I mean, I always had weird dreams but they've changed since we swung by that pocket universe. It messed me up, man."

"So what's different now?"

"The dreams used to be a jumble of random stuff, right? Now I keep seeing this person. This… kid. Well, his body looks young anyway. His eyes are ancient." Lea's expression turned wistful and the blonde wondered what he wasn't saying. "Timeless, like the sea."

If he had to pick a word to describe Lea's tone, _reverent_ came to mind. It made the blonde's spine tingle. "Someone you used to know?" he queried.

Lea shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know but I wish he'd quit keeping me up all night."

"Have you tried warm milk? Lullabies? Counting domesticated herbivores?"

That strange half-smile that said, _You really are alien, aren't you?_ flickered on Lea's face. Fondly, he shook his head, lowering himself to the floor so their shoulders were touching. "Nothing works. At this rate, I'm gonna pass out in the middle of a behemoth stampede or wake up floating in the Caribbean covered in coconut shavings or something. The pocket universe is where it all started. Maybe that's where it'll end."

The blonde blanched. "No." He held up a hushing hand when Lea started protesting. "We go in, we get trapped, we die. Unless you feel like having your atoms pulled apart one by one, there's no way I'm taking you there. You probably just sub-psychically absorbed a heap of random information and your brain can't file it away fast enough. Give it a couple of weeks to process."

"I… might not last that long." He flashed an apologetic smile. "Us humans aren't as indestructible as you Time Lords."

The blonde felt his hearts squeeze. "Even if I thought visiting was a good idea, it's highly probable the pocket universe has already collapsed. Those places aren't designed for long life. Shouldn't even exist, really. A never world, if you will—" He stopped because Lea's face suddenly looked twenty years older, drawn and pale. Had he always cultivated a living corpse image or was this a new thing? Noticing insignificant physical details wasn't a Time Lord's specialty (they were more "bigger picture" type beings, tended to view things on an infinite scale) and this hadn't bothered him before but now he felt ashamed he couldn't tell. He rested a reassuring hand on Lea's shoulder. "Look, we'll swing by the Phernau galaxy, pick up a Dream Eater." A fire spirit, he figured, would work nicely with the human. The sensation of having his nightmares chomped up would be weird but Lea would get used to it. Hell, he'd probably be excited by the prospect.

"Why doesn't that reassure me?" Lea groaned, the personification of feigned long-suffering.

The blonde grinned and released the handbrake.

* * *

x.

Once he moved past the whole Time-Lords-not-paying-attention-to-human-minutiae thing, the blonde realised there was a lot to notice about Lea. The exact length of his fingers, ideal for reaching the awkwardly placed screws in the dark matter stabiliser or untangling photon accelerator coils. His penchant for humming whenever he was immersed deep in an algorithm meant to calculate the half-life of a pocket universe. His hungry gaze, which drew in everything, absorbing even starlight.

Even though Lea's intellect had the alarming effect of making him feel confused (very), agitated (slightly) and awed (extremely), it was his endless enthusiasm that the blonde found most engaging. Whenever he thought too hard about the missing _thing,_ Lea was there, inviting him to play ridiculous Earth video games like Pacman or Frogger. Lea, who insisted on learning Time Lord physiology, hot hands tracing the blonde's sides as he searched for that extra rib, pressing his ear against his chest to marvel at the dual heart pulses. Lea, who learned basic Gallifreyan script in under a month when the process should've taken half his lifetime then sent love notes just to laugh at the way he blushed. Lea, who insisted they dance around the main control room every time they caught a meteor shower. Lea, who made him feel like an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, like he was standing on the edge of the genesis of a star system.

It probably wasn't right. But then, when had Tredecimsasxor cared about morality?

The Spiran night was warm, Lea's skin sticking to the blonde's where they touched at the shoulder, not uncomfortably. The redhead's lips parted slightly in that subconscious expression of awe he so often wore, gaze fixated on the summoner moving barefooted over the casket-covered water. Effervescent lights drifted from the coffins, drawn by the summoner's sombre dance, swirling around in a dazzling display before bursting away, fragments of souls scattered to the skies. The summoner waited until the last of the pyreflies faded before allowing his guardians to usher him away.

"Must be strange for you," Lea said, eyes trained on the waves lapping quietly at the shore, heat radiating off him in waves that only the blonde, with a body temperature approaching half that of a human's, could probably detect. It wasn't in a Time Lord's nature to catalogue outward appearances but the blonde couldn't help noticing how Lea's hair had turned untamed in their time together, long spires razoring down his neck like a medallion for otherworldliness. It hurt to look at him sometimes, like observing someone through a scattering of pyreflies: blurred, not quite _there_.

"What do you mean?"

"You Gallifreyans just go on and on and on. Must be funny, watching all these little lives get snuffed out like—" a snap of the fingers, "—that."

"I'm not immortal, you know. We have a finite amount of regenerations. Thirteen, if you want to get specific, and if we're injured too badly we mightn't regenerate at all."

Lea's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Oh. Right. Still, that's more than me." He worried his bottom lip like he always did when trying to suppress a question he knew was considered rude. Like always, curiosity won. "How many do you have left?"

"Just one." He glanced at the redhead, wondering if he'd see pity or surprise or indifference. Lea's expression didn't alter though; he simply turned outwards to face the ocean, eyes slit against the setting sun.

"Just one, huh," Lea repeated quietly.

They watched the sun melt into the horizon, Lea describing wavelength mechanics, why the colour red was the longest lasting, murmuring thanks when the summoner and his guardians walked by. The alcoholic stench lilting off the shaggy-haired one made Lea's nose wrinkle, a reaction he quickly suppressed at a glare from the stern one in the red jacket. The Gallifreyan thanked him for his service, which didn't exactly dispel the guardian's distrusting air but at least he stopped looking poised to run Lea through with the katana he was carrying. Once they were out of earshot, "What will you do when I'm gone?" he sighed.

"Go home, I suppose. Present my findings to my asshole ex-boss, prove that life does exist outside of Earth. Even he won't be able to say no to my research proposal after that."

"I could drop you off a few thousand years into the future. They'll be more receptive to the idea of extraterrestrials by then. Your notes will be the basis for textbooks for decades."

Lea laughed. "Is that your answer to everything? Run away until you wind up somewhere you like?"

He knew Lea meant it harmlessly but the words slipped past his ribcage, slid into his hearts like accusation. "I don't… It's not _running_. I've been searching."

"For what?"

"Can't say."

Lea frowned. "Geez, sorry for the imposition."

He shook his head. "No, I literally can't tell you. I don't actually know what I'm looking for."

"That… complicates the equation."

 _Way to put it mildly_ , the blonde thought, Lea's phrasing teasing out a smile. "I used to have this funny sensation like I was missing this _thing_ , but I haven't felt that way for a while. It wasn't much to go on, but it was something. Now I don't even have that."

"Oh." And where another person might have offered pointless platitudes or receded to an awkward silence or ignored the revelation entirely, Lea fearlessly plowed ahead. "Let's find it then. Your mysterious _thing_."

The blonde blinked. "I've been trying for years. It's impossible."

Lea's smile made his chest ache. "Nothing's impossible. You've just lost focus, is all. I'll keep your head out of the clouds."

* * *

xi.

It must've been some cosmic joke that this library was primed to generate noise with its rickety bookcases, which required ladders that stretched beyond safe heights, tomes that seemed stuck but immediately gave way once you tugged hard enough to go toppling backwards, innocuous novels which, once wriggled free, sent the entire shelf cascading to the floor. "This is like some sadistic form of Jenga," Lea bemoaned, digging himself out of his third pile of collapsed books while the Dream Eater hovered concerned at his side. Both of them were making no attempt at stealth despite the blonde's repeated instructions. Honestly, sometimes he wondered if Lea was worth the trouble.

"I know it doesn't look like much but this is our best reference," he said in undertones. He didn't point out that ever-prepped-for-mystery Lea was the one insistent on finding the _thing_. "Lifeforms from all corners of the universe have spent eons using this place for document storage. Half the stuff in here wouldn't even make sense to the people of this time period."

Lea shoved the books unceremoniously onto their shelf, thought better of it and began alphabetising them. "I'm surprised you haven't already looked through everything."

"I tried but..." He trailed off, cocking his head towards the double doors.

The Dream Eater offered a questioning honk and the blonde made a slicing gesture to silence it, irritated Lea had ignored his instructions and brought it along. The floorboards creaked. A thudding footstep sounded at the library's entrance. He held his breath for what felt like eternity, during which he cursed Lea's penchant for rule-breaking, but nothing else happened. When it became apparent no evil creatures were lurking in the vicinity, the blonde let out a shaky breath.

Lea snickered, " _But?_ " and a salivating monstrosity burst through the doors.

"But!" the blonde yelled, pointing at the twisted creature before yanking the horrified Lea off the floor, making his notebook tumble away. Ignoring Lea's dismayed squawk and the Dream Eater's frantic yelps, he dragged them both into the TARDIS, the redhead pressing his back to the door, arms splayed and feet braced. Metallic thuds rained down as the blonde flitted around.

An enraged roar filled their ears. Lea's eyes boggled. "A little help!" The blonde continued flipping switches, disengaged the handbrake. Lea's voice took on a desperate keening, "I'm serious!"

"What'll you do? Five minutes and that creature will break through and chomp you like a doggie treat."

Lea swore colourfully. "Do you understand the meaning of 'seri—" His face slowly slackened as he made the mental connection and stepped away from the door. For a split second, he noted how the beast railed helplessly against the apparently indestructible material, the door barely wobbling at each fresh blow, before whipping his head towards the blonde. "You ass! I thought we were gunna die!"

He sniffed. "That's what you get for not listening."

" _What?_ "

"I told you to be quiet. After all this time, you still act like you know better than me."

Lea's mouth dropped open. "Is that what this is about, your ego?" The blonde offered him a cool gaze, assessing the way his hair positively bristled, adrenaline shooting along his synapses rendering him a trembling mass of rage. "Gimme a break, blondie." In four quick strides he was at the Time Lord's side, viciously pulling the handbrake moments after they'd phased out. The ship screeched to a stop. The blonde flew off his feet.

He lifted his head right as the Dream Eater smashed into his face. "Where do you think you're going!" the blonde demanded, spitting out the scales he'd inhaled, shoving the Dream Eater off to drift around, dazed.

Lea whirled on him, snarled, "To get my notebook!" The door slammed behind him.

The blonde scrabbled up, raced to where Lea had been seconds ago and cracked the door. No sign of the beast but Lea was fossicking in the book pile he'd been buried beneath moments ago. "Get back here!" the blonde hissed, restraining the Dream Eater, which was trying to rush to Lea's aid. "Do you want to end your life as an entrée?"

"It was here a second ago," Lea whispered. "Must've been knocked away."

"Or eaten. For the love of the space-time continuum, get back here!"

Lea flipped him the bird, vanishing behind a bookcase, the tip of flaming red the last thing the blonde saw. For an agonising minute, the blonde debated rushing out there and dragging Lea back in by his ridiculous hair. Just when he'd decided he couldn't wait any more, a deafening roar attacked his eardrums, making him clap his palms over his ears. An instant later, Lea exploded back on the scene in a flurry of loose pages and brown fur. "Go go go!" he yelped, the huge beast hot on his heels.

"C'mon!" the blonde urged. Lea leaped the last span, the beast's teeth gnashing the space he'd been occupying moments earlier, and tumbled inside the TARDIS. The blonde slammed the door just in time. He wasn't fast enough to avoid a saliva spraying but at least all his limbs were intact. The assault continued for an indistinct period of time but gradually abated.

They laid there, breaths ragged in the welcome silence. "That was… was…" the redhead wheezed. He looked like a circus contortionist, long legs twisted over his head until he was practically performing a handstand.

The blonde dusted himself off. "A few choice words in roughly two thousand languages spring to mind."

Lea snorted. He wriggled into a sitting position, giving the Dream Eater a reassuring pat while his companion initiated the ship's start-up routine. Once the creature was calm, the redhead began rifling through his notebook, brows drawn down as he extricated a pencil from a pocket and began scribbling. Impressive that he could focus after such a close brush with death.

"Why did you risk your life for that thing anyway?" the blonde grumbled.

Lea looked up. The nebula in their window illuminated infinite shades of green in his eyes. The Time Lord felt his world tilt, Lea's light-consuming pupils reeling him in. "It's important. With it, we can puzzle out your missing _thing_."

The blonde spent so long contemplating the best way to express his gratitude that by the time he'd mentally prepared a speech, the moment had passed. Instead he made pancakes topped with ice-cream, dotted with hundreds and thousands. Cleaning the liquid remnants off the plates, staring at the blueish tinge where the colours had collided, he couldn't understand why he felt sad.

* * *

xii.

It was nice to have definitive guidelines after travelling so long without a map. They worked through Lea's list, which took them to places the blonde hadn't even heard of, and Lea's excitement waned with each failure. This latest location was a ruined castle was a ruin, chunks of turrets and crenellations littered in a sad heap that Lea clambered over breathlessly, the Dream Eater hovering at his side. _"_ Brilliant idea, oh master of time. This place looks only marginally better than my parents' did after my eighteenth." It was the penultimate item on Lea's list of _thing_ -related stuff.

The blonde huffed. "This was your idea. Besides, it's easier this way. No need to sneak around."

"If you say so. Don't know how we're meant to find anything in this mess though." One moment Lea was poking his head through a shattered window, careful not to slice himself on the jagged edges, the next he was crying out, tumbling back as a black mass exploded from the dank interior. The blonde dashed to his side but Lea was unhurt, waving off help as he rubbed his behind and watched the flock of ravens disappear behind clouds. The Dream Eater yipped at their retreat. He grumbled something about murders and the food chain.

"If your fairytale's true, it'll be here. Objects like that tend to be indestructible."

Lea looked unconvinced but he followed the blonde into the gaping maw of the half-collapsed castle anyway. It was an eerie sensation, their footfalls ringing hollowly around abandoned rooms, their voices seemingly absorbed by the hungry stones themselves. He wondered what this place was like when it was teeming with life. Part of him wanted to jump into the past and check but doing so felt like a betrayal, like refusing to accept something for what it was.

They started searching the kitchens, methodically moving their way up until they reached a room with tattered purple banners draped from the walls and a mouldy bed that looked like it could swallow them plus the TARDIS and still have room for seconds. "This looks promising," the blonde said, striding over to a less worn cloth hanging near the bedside table before tugging it loose with Lea's aid. The material fell away, revealing the smooth reflective surface beneath. He sucked in a breath. Lea emitted a victorious whoop. "Hush," the blonde chided. Sure, it seemed abandoned but who knew what slinking creatures lurked in this creepy castle. He didn't want to cause a ruckus, especially after last time.

"Magic mirror on the wall, who's the biggest douchenozzle of them all? Actually, don't answer that. We all know."

The blonde glared. "Can you be quiet for two seconds?"

A white face materialised in the mirror; Lea made a wordless choking sound. The blonde lifted an eyebrow but the apparition just faded. Feeling a little silly, he repeated the refrain: "Magic mirror on the wall, explain this gaping absence inside my soul. How do I fill it?"

Silence. Lea poked him in the ribs. "I think you have to speak in rhymes."

The blonde swung his eyes skyward. "Seriously? Fine." He thought for a moment, then: "Magic mirror on the wall, how do I answer this insistent call?"

"Nice," Lea dragged out the syllable until the blonde smiled.

White mist swirled in the reflective depths, solidifying into a mask-like face. In a flat voice, it intoned, "As the turning of time begets the setting sun, your peace is linked to the axle your world hinges on."

He grasped the sides of the mirror. "That's not enough," he pressed, urgency threading through his voice as the face began receding again. "Tell me more! Tell me!"

The face vanished and an ugly crack snaked across the mirror's surface before the whole thing disintegrated, fine dust piling around the blonde's toes and collecting in the crevices of his shoes. They blinked at the refuse then at each other.

An indescribable look appeared on Lea's face. "So we're looking for… your axle? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

The blonde scratched the back of his head, feeling oddly embarrassed. "I know, I know. Sounds pretty dumb."

* * *

xiii.

The final location had the redhead hopping from foot to foot, the barren sands burning through his high tops before the blonde retrieved more suitable footwear from their ship. It was hard not to laugh when Lea tried switching shoes without his bare feet touching the scorching sand and succeeded in completely stacking it, dissolving into a string of swear words he'd picked up from who knew which planet while the distressed Dream Eater warbled.

The blonde cooed calming words until the spirit quieted and Lea was upright again, wincing at his reddened skin that had contacted the hot surface. "You might want to try this," the blonde suggested, passing over a tube of burn lotion he'd had the foresight to pack. Without a word, Lea accepted it and applied some to the small of his back, taut expression easing as he massaged in the cooling cream. The blonde ignored the way Lea's top lifted up and instead turned query worth exploring. "Want to tell me what's up?"

"Huh?"

"You've been kind of… edgy since we got here."

Lea sighed, handed back the tube. "I never told you but that list isn't just a random collection of jumbled stuff. I organised it. Set each item in order from those supported by the most evidence, all the way down to the ones that are practically myth. This is the last stop so…" His gaze slid away.

The blonde set his jaw. "So what, it's hopeless? We might as well cry until this world turns aquatic, jump in the TARDIS and go careening into the next black hole? Doesn't sound like us. I've never known you to give up hope, Lea." The redhead glanced up, shock briefly flickering across his face. "What?" the blonde snapped, Lea's moping clearly making him testy.

"Nothing. It's just…" A small smile. "You never call me by name."

The tension ebbed; the blonde gave him a playful shove. "Neither do you."

The TARDIS had landed them in the general vicinity of a strange signal. The blonde kept quiet about this, not wanting to alarm Lea because the last time they'd followed a beacon of unknown origin, they'd ended up prisoners on a pirate ship, narrowly avoiding being fed to a ticking reptile. Backpacks stocked with water and sunscreen, they traipsed across the dunes for an indeterminate period of time, Lea doing a good job at staying chipper despite the bone-bleaching heat. How a planet with only one sun was this damn hot was beyond the blonde. The Dream Eater was the only one who seemed pleased with the change of scenery, chasing geckos with open-mouthed joy, burying itself in sand, gnawing the sparse vegetation they occasionally stumbled across.

The blonde was just about to call it a day when the Dream Eater emitted some high pitched chirps, flying towards Lea and swirling around him in an excited flurry before dashing up and over a massive dune. Lea made a valiant attempt at sprinting after it, an impossible task in such soft sands, the blonde following suit. Longer legs proved a boon and Lea was the first to crest the hill, uttering an audible, "Woah," when he halted.

"Did you find it?" the blonde panted, struggling the last few feet. Doubled over catching his breath, Lea uttered an affirmative sound and vaguely waved towards the bottom of the hill.

The blonde's mouth fell open as he absorbed the sight before him.

A cave of shifting sand growing from the ground, granules pooling to form eyes and nose and lips, and a gaping mouth lined with yellow teeth. A tiger's head. The myths had explicitly mentioned the "mouth of the beast" but this was exceeding expectations. "The Cave of Wonders!" he breathed. Part of him couldn't believe they'd actually found it but mostly, he'd had faith in Lea.

Lea guzzled his third bottle of water, crumpling the pliable material in one fist then stuffing it into his pack. "Let's find this treasure."

Carefully, they picked their way down the steep dune and into the dark depths ("We're literally heading into a cave mouth!" the redhead rejoiced.) Inside, it was just past pleasantly warm like sitting too close to a fire, the Dream Eater sticking near Lea's side as they crossed narrow walkways spanning caverns so deep they may not have had an ending. "Wonder where it is," Lea said, voice bouncing around the open space granting the impression they were the last living beings on the planet.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Could you track our movements? Getting trapped in here would be a lousy way to go."

"Not to mention you'd be stuck here alone. Guess having a two thousand year lifespan has its drawbacks." Lea fished his trusty notebook and a pen from his pack, licking the tips of his fingers to turn a page, thin eyebrows forming an imperfect V that directed traffic towards his focal point. The blonde wrenched his eyes away and tried to focus on their surroundings.

Spying another gecko and darted after it. With no better plan, they followed through room after room, some peppered with piles of gold stacked taller than three TARDIS's, one particularly memorable room containing nothing but patterned rugs and mysteriously, dried dates that looked perfectly edible if not dusty.

Eventually, they reached a chamber that was dimly lit by flickering sconces, smaller than the others but blanketed in heavy air. Bridled power hummed along the surface of the blonde's skin as they climbed long steps towards the room's centre where a ruby larger than Lea's head sat on a golden plinth. Various dull objects were scattered around the bottom, the blonde's foot connecting with something that clanged metallically as he bent forward to appraise the enormous jewel. "D'you think this is it?" Lea questioned as he circled the ruby, head tilting to inspect it from all angles.

He wasn't sure but… "It's the most impressive thing in here by far."

Lea's hands hovered over the ruby. It winked enticingly in the half-light. Sweat curled the fuzzy wisps of hair framing a face torn by indecision. A bead of perspiration trickling down his nose, settled on his upper lip. His tongue darted out to grab it.

The blonde nudged him. "Go on. The sooner you grab it, the sooner we can get the hell out of here."

Lea's hands dropped. "Time Lords don't judge on outward appearances, right?" He gestured towards the jewel. "Would _you_ take it?"

For one long moment that seemed to extend across the universe, the blonde stared at the jewel. The crimson glow was tempting: the polished surface, the perfect cut, the way it caught the candlelight just _so._ But then his gaze dropped to the dull copper lamp at his feet and suddenly he knew. "I think we should leave."

"Okay," the redhead breathed.

A gecko crawled across the ruby. Its black eyes blinked at them twice before the Dream Eater gave a triumphant hoot and leaped towards it. Like a falling star, the jewel went toppling off the plinth, tumbling into the black depths. There was no _clink_ signifying it had landed, leaving the blonde briefly wondering whether they were standing over an actual bottomless pit.

A tiny stone bounced off his hand. He glanced up, copping an eyeful of grit as the ground began shaking.

"That… can't be good," Lea said.

The cavern suddenly felt much, _much_ warmer. The vibrations increased, reached fever pitch. From far off came the distinct sound of something large collapsing and a reddish glow eventuated from the not-bottomless pit.

"Run!" the blonde yelled.

They raced from the room, dodging flying debris and rocks plummeting from the ceiling, huge enough to turn them two dimensional. A backwards glance revealed a tidal wave of lava close enough that flecks caught the backs of their necks. Piles of gold turned molten as the sprinted down collapsing corridors, breath burning in their lungs. When they whirled into the next chamber, the Dream Eater honked in alarm as a molten stream cascaded down from somewhere above them. Sparks flew from the deluge; Lea swore as a couple stung his face. Just in time, he yanked the blonde away, losing his glasses in the process. Firefall consumed the Dream Eater and Lea made a wordless choking sound, sparing one pitying look for his lost friend before tugging the blonde towards a hazardously narrow stairway. "Higher ground," he panted.

They scurried up the steps, Lea pulling and pulling, shucking their backpacks on the way. The blonde's hearts roared in his ears; his skin felt stretched thin, dry enough to flake away. And still, the fireflood surged on. The universe zeroed down to insignificant things: muscles trembling; sweat dripping into eyes; the way his heatproof shoes felt like they were melting into the soft under-flesh of his soles. A tiny pinprick of light appeared in the distance.

"Almost there…!" Lea gasped, the two raw slashes where the lava had splattered him glowing starkly beneath his eyes.

They sprinted into the entrance hall and the blonde nearly collided with Lea's back. Peering around the taller man's spindly frame to see what had necessitated the halt, his hearts dropped.

The long expanse of the cave's throat was covered in lava. Chunks of rock floated at sporadic intervals across the red sea.

Lea hesitated just a moment to assess the situation then said, "Frogger?"

The blonde nodded. Leaped.

Carefully, they selected their targets, hopping from one unstable platform to the next. He tried to avoid thinking about how pathetic he'd been at the human game or how Lea constantly dreamed of being consumed by a conflagration, choosing to focus instead on assessing the composition of each rock, the probable density and buoyancy and how much extra weight they might stand. The heat radiating off the fiery floor made it difficult to breathe even though the lava couldn't be deeper than the blonde's knees. Eventually they ended up in front of the cave's mouth, teetering on a platform barely big enough for two.

The blonde grimaced. There was at least forty feet of liquid inferno between them and the exit.

Lea swung his gaze wildly, trying to gauge how they were going to get out of this one. This time, the blonde was swifter, determining their chances of survival at a flat nil. Struggling to stay impassive, debris raining around them, he watched the metamorphosis unfolding across Lea's visage: the _what-the-hell_ and _this-can't-be_ and then, yes, wait for it…

But the regret never came. Lea turned to the blonde, a small smile of acceptance gracing his face. "Well, Your Lordship, it's been real."

The blonde's throat closed over. His eyes squeezed shut, flew open again, gaze racing around as he recalculated and recalculated. Lea touched his arm and if he'd been overheating before, this contact magnified everything impossibly. His head was swimming, the world pinwheeling as he burned up in Lea's atmosphere.

The redhead continued. "For a long time, I felt like one half of those graphs with the lines that never meet. Asymptotes, right? I was an asymptote looking for my other half. I want you to know, you changed that, and I didn't want to say anything earlier 'cos I thought I was just imagining it but now there's no more time and I'm not. I'm not making this up. You and the boy from my dreams, you both give me the same feeling. You're—"

"Lea? Shut up."

And before the redhead could protest, the Time Lord scooped him up and began wading across the molten flow.

The moment his feet connected with the lava, a gasp escaped his lips. Pain, all-encompassing and mind-melting, different to the rebirth of regeneration, this was utterly primal. This was being eaten from the outside in. His skin, sloughing away. His muscle, rent asunder. A baptism of fire, an initiation into what it means to sacrifice, to love so much you'd give up all of time and space. He would've staggered, would've gladly sunk and let the fires consume him but the entire universe was contained in his hands and there was no way. No way.

The walk was one of those undefinable moments, a paradox that lasts lifetimes and an instant, a feat made possible only thanks to a Gallifreyan's durability, and in the end he deposited Lea on the soft sands outside. The sobbing human dragged the blonde out of the fiery pit, away from the collapsing cave of horrors, drawing the injured man to him, cradling his head in his lap. "What the fuck were you thinking?" Lea cried, the scorch marks beneath his eyes bright on his pale face. It looked like he was crying blood. "Can you… Are you able to—?" Aborted sentences like failures to launch, and the blonde had no idea if he had the energy to renew his body anymore. "Tell me you're okay." Begging didn't suit Lea but it was understandable, extraordinary circumstances and all.

"I," he choked out. The night sky was beautiful above him, countless scatterings of light like so many memories. Fuck, but this was agony. "I could've done that blindfolded."

Lea managed a hiccupped half-laugh.

And then came the pinpricks.

His entire body, igniting. His entire body, bursting with light. He had just enough time to see Lea's surprised face transforming into an overjoyed smile before the metamorphosis overwhelmed him. This time, his body compacted into a tight coil of energy. His cheekbones shifted, jaw tapering to a shape better suited for setting firmly. Chin, perfect for pointing upwards in stubborn defiance. Teeth, primed for clenching in determination. And something in his mind finally, _finally_ shifted, some cellular knowledge clicking into place as the last of the light dissipated and the thirteenth incarnation of this Time Lord stood. He saw the same shift in the redhead's expression, the meaning of those dreams of imperfectly lived lives slotting into place, nestled within his heart like history settling into his bones.

That _thing_ that had urged him through far-flung galaxies, to the ends of the universe and back, the _thing_ that had whispered all the _don't-give-up'_ s and _you-can-do-it'_ s and _i-believe-in-you'_ s… The _only thing_ was—

"Axel," he breathed, walking towards his still-kneeling companion, drawn by the redhead's inescapable gravity.

And Axel's smile, bursting with the radiance of a hundred thousand suns, filled all the emptiness they'd ever felt. The redhead pulled him into a hug that felt like a perfectly balanced equation, pressing his ear to the blonde's chest where he heard the steady dual beat of Roxas' hearts.

"First no heart, now you've got two? That's just greedy, Rox."

* * *

 **Glossary:**

 _Gallifrey_ – the home planet of the Time Lords. Distinguishing features include red grass and two suns.

 _Gallifreyan_ – a being from the planet Gallifrey. Outwardly they look exactly like a human but they have a number of distinctive physiological differences, the most prominent being two hearts. They can also regenerate when their body is severely damaged, after which they look like a completely different person with a different personality to boot.

 _TARDIS_ – a spaceship that can travel through time. A component called the chameleon circuit allows it to camouflage itself according to time period/location. In the TV show, the Doctor's TARDIS looks like a police box. Here, Roxas' is stuck looking like a Coca-Cola vending machine.

 _Time Lord_ – the title given to graduates of the Time Academy on Gallifrey. They learn how to travel through space and time and… other really smart stuff that my puny human brain can't comprehend. The word is often used interchangeable with _Gallifreyan_.

 _Time Vortex_ – a dimensional plane where time and space meet. Time travellers journey through here to get from one spot in space-time to another.

 _Untempered Schism_ – a rip in the space-time continuum. Gallifreyan children are forced to stare into it as a rite of passage to gain admittance to the Academy. Some of the kids freak out and run away, others go completely crazy, but them's the dibs.

Any other random technical mumbo-jumbo is exactly that.

And lastly, Roxas' thirteen regenerations in sequential order: unknown (1), Sora, Vanitas, unknown (7), Xion, unknown (1), Roxas. (Ven's probably one of the early ones but I couldn't have him looking like that around Lea!) For simplicity's sake, all of Roxas' unnamed incarnations are blonde.


End file.
